Category Archives: Homeopathic

Hindu Tradition/Superstition

Tags: Hindu, Superstitions, Cleansing

Text

A plain paper towel with water is used to wipe down counters for good luck/fortune, not to actually sanitize.

Informant Info

Race/Ethnicity: Indian

Age: 22

Occupation: College Student

Residence: Northwest Arkansas, USA

Date of Performance: March 2024

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): N/A

Relationship: Friend

Context

AH, the informant, is of Indian descent. Her father practices Hinduism and speaks Tulu. He has been a very influential figure in her upbringing. She also studies indigenous peoples and their customs as a Sustainability major.

Analysis

The informant’s father often performs this action after any surfaces are used. When asked why, he said that Hindus often do this as a means to beckon in good luck and fortune.

Break a Leg Ritual

Text
“So this is like the traditional ‘break a leg!’ before a performance, because I’m a theater major. But before any type of performance, instead of just saying ‘break a leg,’ the performing group that I grew up in since I was a kid to high school, we always would say ‘break ALL your legs.’ As like a way of saying ‘you’re even gonna do better than just break a leg, like you’re gonna have a phenomenal performance.’ And then we would- I don’t know how to explain this properly, but we basically lock our pinky fingers together, and then like, bump each other’s hips, each hip twice, and then like, spin, like, turn with our arms. And I was like- everyone in the group that I grew up in performing did this, um, and was incredibly superstitious about it. It was a thing of like, even if you were called to places, you would run backstage to the other side of the stage to find the other people in the cast to do it to. Because it was an incredibly, like, you HAVE to do this. Like, if not something’s gonna go wrong. Um, and so I was incredibly superstitious about it. Like if I didn’t get the chance to do it to everyone, I, like, I was not comfortable on stage and I was like ‘something’s gonna go wrong, I’m gonna mess up, just it’s not gonna be the performance I know it can be.’

And now that I’m in college and I’m not part of this performing group anymore, I still carry it on. Um, especially with this one, like, performance group I’m part of. Backstage before every show that I’ve started since freshman year doing, I teach it to like anyone who’s new in the group, and I do it with as many people in the cast as I can do, and I even like, explain the story of it to people, like ‘this is something I used to do in my past performing community that I was a part of, and we’d say break all your legs,’ and I teach it to them and then like, they go on to do it to other people in the cast and explain it to them. So it’s something I’m like carrying on and spreading to other people.”

Context
C is a current student at the University of Southern California and grew up in Palm Desert, California. She gave the context that she had been part of the same local theater group for her preteen and teenage years until coming to college. When asked to elaborate about some of the logistics of the ritual, C explained how the ritual would be done between two people in the cast, with the goal of everyone in the cast eventually doing it with everyone else. She also stressed the importance of performing the ritual as immediately before the beginning of the performance as possible. She also described how different people in her original group believe in different degrees of consequences for not performing the ritual with everyone in the cast; while some people think it is not strictly necessary, many, including C, believe that there will be “severe and immediate consequences” during the performance for not doing it with everyone. Finally, C explained that, while she is not sure when the ritual began, allegedly everyone who her director had worked with had a similar kind of ritual, which leads her to believe it stemmed from him and evolved to what it is today.

Analysis
As C acknowledged, this tradition takes a widely-known example of theater-specific performative speech and adds an additional physical element as added superstitious behavior. I would say that this ritual combines elements of homeopathic and contagious magic. By believing that not performing this ritual correctly induces bad luck, this theater group exhibits the ‘like produces like’ belief behind homeopathic magic; however, the contact required for the ritual, perhaps to ‘share luck’ amongst the cast, suggests that the connection between two cast members lingers after contact, which is characteristic of contagious magic. There also seems to be an added dimension of promoting the group’s strength and unity; by requiring everyone in the cast to perform this bad-luck-warding behavior together, it reinforces the idea that the group is stronger together. Ultimately, I think this ritual is a perfect example of the multiplicity and variation that is often said to be a core component of folklore, and I would be interested to see if/how this ritual changes after its introduction to USC theater spaces.

Text:

In a discussion about family health practices, a classmate shared a folk remedy rooted in his heritage. When a family member falls ill, his father employs a traditional healing method. This involves igniting a tissue, placing it on a glass, and then setting the glass on the stomach of the sick person. The belief is that the burning tissue creates a vacuum within the glass, which then draws out the infection from the individual’s body.

Context:

My classmate explained that this practice of using fire and a glass to cure ailments is an ancestral folk medicine technique passed down through generations in his family. They believe that the heat and resulting suction specifically target the sickness, effectively extracting it from within. He recalled this method being applied various times throughout his childhood, particularly for stomach-related issues. The ritual, though medically unverified, is deeply embedded in the familial tradition, and it’s a vivid representation of the intimate trust they place in their heritage and the natural methods of healing.

Analysis:

This folk remedy mirrors the principles of sympathetic magic, specifically of the contagious variety, as outlined by James George Frazer. Just as Frazer described how objects associated with a person, such as a lock of hair, could be used to influence their well-being, so does the use of a glass on the body in this practice suggests a transfer or extraction of ailment. While to the outsider it may seem a quaint or even irrational act, to those practicing, it’s a manifestation of a deep-seated belief in the tangible interaction between physical objects and one’s health. Furthermore, Hafstein’s notion of collective tradition plays a role here, emphasizing the importance of community and shared practices in the development of folk remedies. Rather than deriving from a single innovator, this practice is likely the result of communal beliefs and the collective wisdom of the family, passed down and adapted over time. It represents a lineage of knowledge and a tangible connection to their ancestors, imbuing the act with personal, cultural, and historical significance beyond mere “entertainment value” or rudimentary medical intervention. This traditional method, while not scientifically substantiated, offers a unique lens through which we can examine the interplay of belief, culture, and the human need to find solace in the face of illness.

Altar

Name: Georgia

Text

I created an altar and painted all of the matriarchs in my family line. In the middle I painted myself wearing a Bulgarian head covering. The women are painted as the different waxing and waning moons. I added some nature ~ leaves, sticks, whatever wonders I find on the ground. There are some other objects that hold an ancestral significance to me. I pray at this altar. By praying at this altar, I commune with my ancestors. I sometimes leave food offerings, I create paintings of them and I talk to them when I pray. Sometimes I cry a lot at the altar and I feel comforted, it’s like crying in your grandmother’s lap. It’s always warm. This is a space where my ancestors can land & where I can share things with them. My brother is awaiting his first child & so I blessed the baby’s gift by leaving it a few weeks on the altar. 

Context

Altars have been used in all sorts of cultures. Praying or praying at an altar wasn’t practiced much in my family and it’s something I’ve rekindled on my own. 

Analysis

This friend is a very spiritual person. I believe she is taking on a traditional practice of altars and re-contextualizing it into her own ritual. They both have a different perspective, or rather have started a new trend in their life because of their spirituality. The idea of altars could reach her through diffusion since it wasn’t taught from her family. This knowledge could be from online, books, or others as I know she is active in spiritual communities online. I believe this is a form of the law of similarity. She altered the tangible world to connect to a bigger thing in the intangible world by depicting something of similarity to that bigger thing. In this case, she has painted her matriarchs in each cycle of the moon to facilitate this. In addition, Georgia is using fetish objects (spiritually loaded or magically significant) to place on her altar to increase the connection to the divine/her ancestors. This is an example of a mashup resulting from the exposure of new cultures from around the world and taking what resonates to create one’s own charged ritual.

Wishing on eyelashes

Text:

HT reports that he uses eyelashes to make wishes.

“When I find an eyelash on my cheek, I swipe it up with my finger, make a wish, and blow on it.”

When asked what the rules are for this ritual, HT responded with the following:

“You have to keep the wish to yourself. You have to blow it off your finger, it won’t work if it’s still stuck to you. My dad told me that there’s a game you have to play as well, if you notice someone else has lost an eyelash, you hold it between your pointer and your thumb and ask them to guess which finger it’s stuck to. If they get it right, then they get to make a wish. If they get it wrong, then you get to make a wish. But, you have to make a wish for that person, not for yourself. I don’t really do it that way, I just make a wish with the eyelash.”

When asked where he picked up the ritual, HT responded:

“From my parents. When there was an eyelash on my cheek, my mom would say that I get to make a wish, so I just kinda made the connection from there. Other than my dad explaining the game you can play with it, no one really explained it beyond that. I used to kind of pick my eyes for eyelashes, but my mom made me stop that by telling me I wouldn’t get to make a wish if I forced it that way.”

When asked what he likes to wish for and if there are any limits to the kinds of wishes you can make, HT responded:

“I can’t tell you what I wished for cause then it won’t come true. But no, I don’t think there’s any limit to what you can wish for. I guess it is just an eyelash, so you probably can’t ask for anything big, like winning the lottery or something. I don’t know, I just wish for little things here and there.”

Context:

HT is a twenty-four year old man, a recent college graduate, who is currently living at home with his parents. This the response that he gave when he asked to tell me about any good luck charms that he has.

Analysis:

By making a wish and blowing an eyelash away, HT engages in a form of sympathetic magic, where the act of performing a ritualistic action is believed to influence real-world outcomes. In one sense, the practice is a form of homeopathic magic, where the act of blowing the eyelash, which has been imbued with the wish, can be put out into the universe, a magic act that takes the wish from the mind of an individual and into the physical world. The size of the eyelash also seems to have some correlation with the size of the wish that one can make. In another sense, this is a form of contagious magic, wherein a smaller part of his body, his eyelash, will be able to affect the world and he affected in return. Since the eyelash was once physically connected to him, the magic that happens with it/to it will impact him as well. HT’s father’s explanation of the game that involves the eyelashes adds another layer to the ritual’s complexity. The game involves a form of reciprocity, where the eyelash has the opportunity to grant a wish to another person. However, this wish has limits, as it still must pertain to the person that the eyelash came from. It’s possible that the invention of this rule could be a modern adaptation, a way of taking the sting out of someone losing their wish by losing the game. The game elevates the ritual of making wishes with eyelashes by infusing it with interactive elements (albeit voluntry ones, by HT’s admission) and reinforcing its communal significance within the group.